Election

Last week Glenn Beck made an announcement that generated an overly prodigious amount of media attention. He said that he was done with the Republican Party, elaborating that…

“I have made my decision. I am out. I am not a Republican. I will not give a dime to the Republican party. I am out. I highly recommend run from the Republican party. They are not good.”

And that Republicans…

“…have the spine of a worm, the ethics of whores, and the integrity of pirates.”

Since then, Beck has gone to war with Karl Rove and other GOP apologists. But he also praised some notable GOP worms, whores, and pirates. He virtually endorsed Ted Cruz for president, while maintaining that his mind is still open to Rand Paul and Scott Walker. All three are Republicans. He expressed surprise that his public resignation from the party created such a stir since he has said the same thing for years. That’s true, but if so then why did he say it again in the present tense and with such a flair as if it was a new revelation? It wouldn’t have been for the media attention, would it?

This week Beck visited his old pal Bill O’Reilly to explain his departure from the Worm Party. O’Reilly was convinced that Republicans were doing what they had to do in order to win elections (i.e. whores). But Beck wouldn’t have any of that. He had prepared a list of the grievances he holds for the Grand Old Pirates. Here is that list:

They surrendered on the abortion bill.

Surrendered on executive orders on illegal immigration.

Common Core.

They helped push through 3.5 trillion dollars of deficits this last year.

They won’t fight ObamaCare.

They voted to confirm Cass Sunstein.

They thwarted the bill on the NSA data collection.

They’re still not doing anything on Benghazi.

They haven’t done anything on the targeting of conservatives by the IRS.

They haven’t done anything on the V.A.

They also threw an election against Chris McDaniel to Thad Cochran. They actually went to the Democrats and played the race card.

That list is a steaming heap of wingnut dementia. Let’s explore its contents.

Beck doesn’t say what abortion bill was surrendered, but I defy anyone to identify an anti-abortion bill that Republicans didn’t support 100%. The only recent issue is a bill on sex trafficking into which Republicans slipped some anti-abortion language without telling Democrats. So Democrats have held up the bill, but Republicans are still standing firm. So contrary to Beck’s assertion, there is no surrender.

On immigration and executive orders Beck seems to think that Speaker Boehner’s unprecedented lawsuit against the administration is tantamount to surrender. Likewise, holding up the confirmation vote for Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch doesn’t convince Beck that the GOP is serious about opposing the President on this.

Beck’s inclusion of Common Core in this list merely reveals his utter ignorance of the issue. Common Core is an initiative launched and implemented by local and state education officials. The federal government has nothing to do with it and there is no law to oppose. It is an entirely voluntary project.

They won’t fight ObamaCare? Apparently more than 50 votes to repeal or cripple the law doesn’t qualify as fighting it.

Cass Sunstein is a favorite foil for Beck. He has called Sunstein “the most dangerous man in the world.” Only Beck can explain what drives that obsession, however, most Republicans in Congress voted not to confirm him for his position as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (from which he resigned two and a half years ago). Only five Republicans voted for him and had they not, Sunstein would still have had enough votes for confirmation.

Benghazi? Really? They’re still not doing anything on Benghazi? Hundreds of hearings, subpoenas, and a media assault that has made the word a sad cliche to represent delusional overreaction, and Beck still thinks that they have done nothing?

On the IRS and the Veterans Administration – see Benghazi. And google Darrell Issa.

The list item that Beck saved for last concerned an election in Mississippi where a Tea Party candidate that Beck supported was defeated by an incumbent Republican in the primary. Beck is still holding a grudge over his candidate losing, even though McDaniels pretty much threw the election himself by participating in a scandalous invasion of privacy that his campaign executed wherein they sneaked into a nursing home to take pictures of Cochran’s ailing wife.

In short, Beck’s list of reasons for leaving the Republican Party are mostly a result of his clinical dementia. For the most part Republicans have been pursuing everything that Beck would have them pursue. The fact that they are getting nowhere is only due to there being no there there. If Beck had any better method of achieving his goals, or any better evidence of wrongdoing, then why hasn’t he presented it?

The only thing Beck has to offer is his hysterical conspiracy theories and his determination to glorify himself. He has all the credibility of a snake oil salesman turned revival show evangelist. And the fact that Fox News continues to give him a platform to spew his psychotic ramblings is just more proof that Fox is a network that has nothing to do with news.

Who would ever have thought that a potential candidate for the Republican Party’s nomination for President of the United States would ever seriously challenge Sarah Palin’s epic idiocy? After all, the woman who couldn’t name a magazine that she reads and thinks that Africa is a country ought to have a lock on the contest for dumbfuckery.

Enter former neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Apparently the medical degree and years of laudatory practice have not proved to be obstacles to asinine blathering. In an interview with GQ Magazine, Carson demonstrated his aptitude for derangement by referring to President Obama as a psychopath because he looks great “like most psychopaths. That’s why they’re successful. That’s the way they look. They all look great.” You have to wonder if that’s his medical diagnosis or if he’s just riffing ala Glenn Beck.

However, as stupid as that was, it was not what earned him the honor of toppling Sarah Palin from her pinhead perch. No, Carson had to exceed his previous efforts that included saying that America is “very much like Nazi Germany” and advocating dumping the Geneva Conventions. So he dug deep and came up with this response to an Israeli tour guide’s impromptu lesson on Israeli politics:

“And what is the role of the Knesset?” he interjected. This prompted a tutorial on Israel’s legislature. Carson is a tall, dignified-looking man with a placid, almost sleepy face. As he tried to concentrate on his Hebrew Schoolhouse Rock primer, he seemed even more fatigued. “It sounds complex,” he finally said. “Why don’t they just adopt the system we have?”

Brilliant! Why indeed? In fact, why hasn’t every nation abandoned their government processes and implemented the only ones that Dr. Carson can at least pretend to understand? After all, Israel’s parliamentary system is very much like other democracies around the world that have existed far longer than ours. So obviously it is too complex to be comprehended by a mere brain surgeon. As opposed to America’s simplistic bicameral republic that even the Supreme Court has wrestled with for a couple of centuries.

Carson’s painfully naive request that Israel scrap their government and replace it with another shows just how pitifully unqualified he is to hold any public office that might require him to make diplomatic decisions. If he thinks that parliamentary democracy is complex, imagine how much communism would confuse him. Would his foreign policy initiatives for Russia and China be that they just adopt the system we have?

While it is disturbing that an adult seeking to be elected to the highest office in the land has such an ignorant grasp of the world, it is downright depressing that there are so many Americans who regard him as qualified to hold that office. What has happened to the Republican Party that was once the home of Abraham Lincoln and Dwight Eisenhower?

Two years ago News Corpse published a satirical article announcing that Fox News had signed teen murderer George Zimmerman to host a new program called “Stand Your Ground.” The article purported to have sources inside Fox who confirmed the news and noted that…

“The controversial signing is consistent with Fox’s programming philosophy of exploiting the transient publicity of media spectacles by drafting the beneficiaries of inordinate press attention, despite a lack of experience or qualifications – e.g. Sarah Palin.

“The preliminary format for the Zimmerman program is said to consist of segments analyzing breaking crime dramas such as murderous spouses, kidnapped sorority girls, celebrity arrests, high-speed police chases, and any stray rumors involving presidential sex scandals. Fox News contributor, and noted racist ex-cop, Mark Fuhrman, will have a regular spot on the panel segment to offer his expertise in undermining criminal prosecutions with racial epithets. In that respect Fuhrman, who famously extolled the virtues of the “N” word, shares common ground with Zimmerman who regards innocent black teenagers walking through his neighborhood as “fucking punks.”

Well, it turns out that that may not have been far-fetched enough. Zimmerman has now released a video (below) he made with his divorce lawyer that positions him for a starring role in the Republican presidential primary. Sensing the Tea Party’s affection for strident anti-Obama ranting, Zimmerman is now joining the Obama Derangement Society in blaming the President for anything and everything they can think of. If Obama can be blamed for ISIS, cop shootings in Ferguson, and even Hurricane Katrina, then why not make him responsible for Zimmerman’s prosecution for murdering an unarmed kid. On that matter Zimmerman said that the President was…

“…pitting Americans against each other totally based on race […] for him to make incendiary comments as he did, and to direct the Department of Justice to pursue a baseless prosecution he, by far, overstretched, overreached, even broke the law in certain aspects.”

Adopting the rhetoric that Obama is “lawless” puts Zimmerman in the company of folks like Ted Cruz and Rand Paul and Ben Carson, all regarded by the GOP as viable candidates while spewing baseless and irrational charges. For the wingnut constituency, that’s all it takes to be considered presidential timber. After all, Carson has no more experience than Zimmerman to be the leader of the free world, and he is taken seriously by the Teabaggers. So why not Zimmerman? It’s just a matter of time, unless Fox scoops him up first.

Today marks the official start of the Republican Presidential primaries. First out of the Clown Car is freshman Texas senator Ted Cruz. As the first candidate to announce, Cruz is bucking the odds where electoral history records that no candidate who announced first has prevailed since 1952.

Cruz has bigger problems than a statistical curse. His popularity in a large field of contenders is decidedly weak. Coming in at eighth in the RealClear polling average, he is trailing outliers like Ben Carson and Chris Christie. And he is also near the bottom of the pack in a match-up against Hillary Clinton, losing to the prospective Democratic nominee by double digits.

The only constituency where Cruz is viewed favorably is the Glenn Beck/Tea Party crowd of dimwitted right-wing extremists. There aren’t enough of them to get Cruz to the White House. Hell, there aren’t enough of them to get Cruz to the House of Pies.

He’s a candidate without a portfolio. After all the harping by conservatives about whether President Obama was lacking experience when he ran for president, they are now being asked to support someone with even less experience. Although both were senators for only two years when they ran, Obama spent seven years in the Illinois state legislature prior to becoming a senator. What’s more, the same crackpots who insisted that Obama was not qualified to be president due to their delusional claims about his birthplace and communist upbringing, don’t seem to have any problem with Cruz, who was born in Canada to a Cuban father who fought alongside Fidel Castro.

The irascible Cruz’s tenure in the senate is fraught with controversy. Even his Republican colleagues were embarrassed by his attempt to shut down the government with a filibuster that featured a reading of “Green Eggs and Ham.” Likewise, Cruz angered his peers when his greenhorn maneuvering permitted Democratic Leader Harry Reid to get confirmations for two dozen Obama appointees that would have otherwise been bypassed.

On policy Cruz is as far to the right as one can get. He has never seen a war or military escalation he didn’t love. He is a science denier who rejects both Climate Change and evolution. He opposes immigration reform, marriage equality, raising the minimum wage, and abortion even in cases of rape or incest. He voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act. He would demolish the wall of separation between church and state. He has made repealing “every word” of the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) a centerpiece of his platform, despite the fact that it would explode the deficit and cause millions of Americans to lose their health insurance.

In his public statements, Cruz has been less than credible. Aside from having an overtly hostile personality that disrespects his opponents and their offices, his track record for honesty is dismal. PolitiFact has rated two-thirds of his statements as “Mostly False” or worse. That’s a lower percentage than all of the other main GOP candidates.

The good news (or bad news depending on your appreciation of political comedy and/or absurdist performance art) is that Cruz has almost no chance of winning the Republican nomination. He may rise to the top of the heap briefly as almost all GOP contenders do (see Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump). But he cannot prevail over the more establishment oriented Jeb Bush or Scott Walker. He is the poster boy for wingnut conservatism. And he is bought and paid for by the Koch brothers, although he is not the lone Republican with that distinction. Walker, Marco Rubio, and Rand Paul all appeared with Cruz at a recent Koch-fest to plead for their anointing. But it was Cruz who went the extra distance by praising his hosts becuase they “stood up for free-market principles and endured vilification.”

In his announcement speech, Cruz hit on all of the cliche right-wing drool enhancers: America uber-alles, God-centered government, and Ayn Randian self-interest in all matters. He spun his personal biography as a child of immigrants, whom he hopes to prevent from achieving the same American dream that his family enjoyed.

He basked in the warm reception he received from the captive audience at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University where the announcement took place. [Update: The students were required to attend or be fined] It was an appropriate venue for the sanctimonious son of a fire-and-brimstone evangelical preacher who truly believes that the world is on fire already. Which may explain his campaign logo: An upside flag that is aflame. And his announcement PR continues tonight on (where else) Fox News as he canoodles with Sean Hannity for the full hour.

The upcoming Republican presidential primaries promise to be an entertainment extravaganza for America in general and for Democrats in particular. The warring factions are preparing for a bloody conflagration as the radical Tea Party aims to hammer the hapless establishment for being ineffective cowards, and the establishment plots to cast the Tea Partiers as unrealistic losers. However, the fracturing coalition of wingnuts that comprise the GOP (Greedy One Percent) is already beginning to fray around the edges even before the campaign season has officially commenced.

This week’s preliminaries were initiated by self-described rodeo clown and crazy person, Glenn Beck, who came out swinging with a rant about how awful the Republican Party is. For most Americans Beck was just stating the obvious. And his declaration that he was “done with it” was not even new for him. Nevertheless, he reiterated that…

“I have made my decision. I am out. I am not a Republican. I will not give a dime to the Republican party. I am out. I highly recommend run from the Republican party. They are not good.”

Well, that might not go down well with Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, Ben Carson, and all the other Republicans currently mulling a run for the Republican nomination, rather than running from it. And Mike Lee, Tom Cotton, Louie Gohmert, Steve King, and other GOP members of Congress may likewise not appreciate it. These all happen to be people for whom Beck has deep affection, but from whom he is now recommending running.

However, the main event will be the reaction from veteran GOP hack, and Bush’s brain, Karl Rove. Turdblosson appeared on Fox News (where else) to counter Beck’s uppercut, and he brought his whiteboard with him. Rove deflected Beck’s broadside as being “old news” and noted that he had never donated to the GOP in the first place. Rove continued by denigrating Cruz, a Beck favorite, as a hypocrite. In the end, Rove surmised that Beck’s renouncement might hurt a bit, but would not have a lasting impact.

But this aint over. Beck responded to Rove’s defense of the establishment with a long, rambling Facebook post that filled in all of the gaps Beck left in his earlier tirade. He explicitly cited what he regarded as the failures of a hopelessly ineffectual GOP. He specifically mentioned the deficit, ObamaCare, immigration, and the insane conspiracy theory about Grover Norquist. Also on his list of particulars are Network Neutrality, Common Core, the IRS, Cass Sunstein, and of course, Benghazi. In other words, the usual bullshit that wingnuts have been rattling their cages over for years. But the knockout punch has to be this stinger:

“You guys have the spine of a worm, the ethics of whores, and the integrity of pirates. (My apologies to worms, whores and pirates).”

Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark. Although I can’t say that I disagree with him. But how will Rove ever recover from that? It’s hard to predict the outcome of this first round battle when both parties are such pitiful has beens. Nobody really cares what either of them have to say, except for their own glassy-eyed disciples. But it is a fun opener that portends even greater amusement as the real candidates bounce into the ring. So settle back and be sure to have plenty of refreshments handy. This may be a good time to buy stock in Orville Redenbacher.

This is a MEDICAL ALERT. If you believe that Donald Trump is running for president, stick an ice pick in your eye to see if you can get your brain started again. Don’t worry about damaging any important grey matter because if you bought Trump’s scam there is little left in your skull to damage.

For those paying attention, Trump has been pretending to run for president for decades. He blathers about his “intentions” for a few weeks, insists that he is the only one who can save America from ruin, gets a bunch of idiot pundits to join the speculation, then retreats to his Manhattan penthouse to restock his bar and fluff his weasel-hair toupee. In his latest fake campaign, Trump announced that…

“Americans deserve better than what they get from their politicians — who are all talk and no action.”

Didn’t he just describe himself for the past thirty years? And why Trump would think that Americans would vote for him when 74%, according to a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, view him negatively (the lowest by far of all candidates), and his track record in business includes four bankruptcies, is a question that only Trump’s ego can answer.

Trump’s platform consists mainly of anti-Obama mythologies such as his Kenyan birth, his Muslim faith, his ghost-written books, and his fake academic credentials. Trump has bought in to every hysterical conspiracy theory that has ever been floated about Obama. But who can deny Trump’s own resume that prepares him to lead the free world? After all, he has appeared on a reality TV show alongside Gary Busey and Meatloaf. What more could you want?

The best evidence that Trump is not running for anything other than the attention of dimwitted Fox News pundits and Tea Party basket cases is the response by NBC to his announcement that he will not be returning to Celebrity Apprentice. A spokesman for the network told Politico that “NBC Entertainment is planning to go ahead with production,” and that they would not be making any further comments. Notice that nothing in their statement confirmed that Trump had quit. Generally when that occurs the network would express its gratitude for the many years working together and extend their best wishes for the future. If NBC had the slightest inkling that Trump was serious they would not be committing production budgets and personnel to business as usual.

So to those who still think that a broadly unpopular loser, whose TV bosses don’t even believe him, is actually throwing his wig in the ring, please report to the nearest mental hospital. Trump would have a better chance of winning his Miss USA beauty pageant than a ticket to the White House. Although he would need a new hairpiece and some sort of act for the talent portion of the show.

Addendum: In the highly unlikely event that Trump goes through with this charade (delighting Democrats everywhere), NBC could still proceed with Apprentice by getting Mitt Romney to take over the show. He is another hollow multimillionaire who likes to fire people. In fact, the GOP has a deep bench in that category.

The much anticipated speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before a joint session of Congress has come and gone leaving a notable aroma of anti-climax. After being hailed by many in politics and the press as an historic occasion, there was nothing of substance revealed in the address. It turned out to be a tale of a dystopian future that mimicked the doomsday rantings of Glenn Beck, complete with caliphates and the collapsing of civilization.

John Boehner’s invitation to Netanyahu violated decades of protocol and was a blatantly political slap at President Obama. Republicans heralded the speech as a vital moment to embrace an important ally. In fact, they implied that any opposition to the controversial appearance was tantamount to being anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic (as Andrea Tantaros of Fox News opined twice). The American right is shamelessly infatuated with Netanyahu and regard him as a superior model of leadership to our own president who was popularly elected twice.

Netanyahu enjoys the admiration of conservatives who favor posturing for war over diplomacy. They have elevated him to hero status and fantasize about having him replace Obama in the White House. Sarah Palin has gone even further by seeking to profit from her crush by selling t-shirts emblazoned with his picture and the oath “I Stand With Bibi.”

However, these conservative Bibi disciples may come to regret their insistence that loyalty to the current Israeli Prime Minister (a war-mongering conservative) is equivalent to loyalty to Israel. That’s because in a couple of weeks there may very well be a new Prime Minister with a very different worldview. The Guardian reports that…

“Binyamin Netanyahu’s campaign for re-election for a fourth term as Israel’s prime minister appears to be stumbling, with recent polls suggesting he is marginally behind his biggest challenger, Isaac Herzog.”

Herzog is the leader of Israel’s Labor Party and has a more liberal, inclusive political philosophy. He represents a coalition that seeks peace through cooperation. He is a lawyer, a member of the Knesset (Israel’s legislature), a former IDF intelligence officer, and is every bit as determined to insure Israel’s security as Netanyahu. But he believes that a two-state solution negotiated and enforced with neighbors in the region is the way to end the decades-long hostilities.

If Herzog prevails in the March 17 election, it will be interesting to see if the right-wingers in the U.S. continue to regard the Prime Minister as the official proxy for all things Israel. Will they invite him to speak before a joint session of Congress? Will they hang on his every word. Will they repudiate as disloyal anyone who dares to disagree with him? Will they hawk t-shirts with his smiling face and promises to stand with him?

It doesn’t take much courage to slide out on a limb and predict that the wingnut contingent would not give Herzog the same measure of respect that they give to Netanyahu. And you might wait a long time to be able to buy a Herzog t-shirt from Sarah Palin’s PAC. So while Israel would benefit enormously from the election of a Labor Party majority, There’s another reason why Americans should root for that outcome. Because it would just be so much fun watching Republican pols and pundits squirming to validate their disdain for an Israeli PM after demanding allegiance to their hero Netanyahu.

As America’s number one network for extreme, right-wing political bias and propaganda, Fox News relishes every opportunity to disparage their ideological foes and to sanctimoniously exalt themselves as protectors of their twisted versions of the truth. One of the favorite tactics of Fox News is to taunt public figures who make the completely rational decision to avoid the abuse that they would endure were they to submit to being interviewed by the network’s bullies and ignorant partisans. This week there was another example of that attempted intimidation by Fox’s media reporter, Howard Kurtz.

Kurtz appeared on The Kelly File with fill-in host and terrorist profiler Shannon Bream, a former beauty pageant contestant and graduate of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University with no journalism training. The topic of the segment was departing Attorney General Eric Holder’s scheduled interviews with some news networks that did not, as of yet, include Fox. Bream queued Kurtz up by asking “Does he help himself at all by walking out the door and slamming it in our faces.” That totally unbiased question got this response from Kurtz:

“I think that it’s a sign of confidence when any politician, political figure, cabinet officer, congressman, is willing to sit down and take tougher questions from those you might perceive to be your harshest critics. […] Is the nation’s top law enforcement officer really afraid of [Fox News anchor] Bret Baier?”

Any suggestion that Holder, or anyone else who chooses to keep their distance from Fox News, is afraid of them is utter nonsense. That’s like saying you’re afraid of being interviewed by Honey Boo Boo, when the truth is you’re just smart enough to not waste your time. Notorious liar Bill O’Reilly has used the accusation of fear repeatedly, but frankly I’d be more afraid of Honey Boo boo.

Furthermore, if Kurtz even bothers to take his own analysis seriously, then why doesn’t he apply it to Republicans? He seems so disturbed that a single administration official is waving off Fox News, but he doesn’t seem bothered at all that the entire Republican Party is boycotting MSNBC. Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee has stated publicly that there will be no GOP presidential primary debates on that network. There will be four on Fox. Therefore, according to his own logic, Kurtz is implying that that every single one of the GOP candidates for president are afraid of Rachel Maddow?

What’s even more interesting about this is that the GOP candidates are even afraid of the friendly venues they have chosen for themselves. The RNC has drastically reduced the number of debates and assumed control of who will moderate them and ask questions. That was done to avoid a repeat of the embarrassing displays put on by Republicans during the 2012 election cycle. On one hand that may be a wise decision on their part considering the proclivity for Republicans to say stupid things. On the other hand it shelters them from the real world of political brawling that might toughen them up for the general election. And it exposes them as fearful of letting their candidates express themselves by taking positions for which they would later be held accountable.

After being left off of a preliminary list of networks that would be interviewing Holder, Fox News VP Michael Clemente whined that Holder’s reluctance to subject himself to the petty carping of Fox’s confirmed haters does a disservice to “the interests of a free press.” Apparently he doesn’t understand the phrase “free press.” You have to wonder where he gets the notion that a free press requires every public figure to submit to every media outlet, no matter how disreputable and hostile. It would be more correct to applaud Holder for showing respect for a free press by declining to validate Fox’s deceitful brand of pseudo-journalism.

Whether or not Holder grants Fox News an opportunity to malign him in person, it is clear that neither he, nor anyone else, is afraid of Fox. They just show it the measure of respect it deserves. But Republicans are demonstrating that they terrified of MSNBC and every other media outlet, including Fox, by implementing a policy that prohibits them from engaging in any public debates that aren’t sanctioned by the party apparatchiks. That’s a story that Kurtz will never report.

The annual parade of wingnuttery known as the Conservative Political Action Conference has been steaming along for a couple of days now. Most of the star attractions have had their say and the general message that we can take away from the affair is that President Obama is an Islamic terrorist, Hillary Clinton is an old liberal, and ObamaCare, Common Core, the IRS, and immigrants must all be abolished.

How’s that for an electoral platform for 2016? It’s pretty much the same agenda that has been broadcast on Fox News for the past six years. And the clapping conservo-bots in the CPAC conference hall responded precisely the way they were trained to respond. Not a single speaker said anything new or insightful. It was hour after hour of regurgitated right-wing dogma, and it absolutely thrilled the glassy-eyed audience who couldn’t have been more predictable if they were hooked up to a machine.

However, just for the sake of entertainment, there were a couple of moments that deserve some special attention. And it wasn’t Ted Cruz whining about ObamaCare, or Sarah Palin pretending to support the troops, or Scott Walker comparing American working people to terrorists, or Ben Carson calling for unity after saying that, because of liberals, America is very much like Nazi Germany. None of those easily foreseeable sentiments earn much more than a yawn. But there was some unintentional comedy displayed at the conference.

First of all, we have Duck Dynasty’s patriarch Phil Robertson. This long-haired, bearded, headbanded, camo-clad freak took a swipe at hippies. Has he ever seen one (or looked in the mirror)? Somehow that clean living, nature loving subculture that faded into obscurity forty years ago is to blame for every sexually transmitted disease in America today. Now that’s a powerful message for a 21st century Republican Party.

Robertson was invited to the conference to receive the Andrew Breitbart Defender of the First Amendment Award, which is not even worth the time or energy to make fun of. In his remarks Robertson divided the nation into the pious patriots for whom the Constitution was written and “any other” treasonous sinners who are not entitled to its liberties:

“You know what’s happened GOP? We’ve got too many “any others” in the White House. It [the Constitution] wasn’t written for them. […] Stand on the Bible, stand on the Constitution, don’t budge. Hold on to your weapons. That’s what brought us here. We had to have all three to run the Brits back to where they came from.”

Let’s just set aside the divisive elitism that Robertson evokes in order to elevate himself above those he regards as his inferiors. Robertson’s assertion that we needed the Bible, weapons and the Constitution to beat back the British has a glaring flaw. There was no Constitution until four years after the Revolutionary War was won and over. And the British also had weapons and the same Bible, but it didn’t lead them to victory.

The other moment of hilarity was the speech by Donald Trump, the reality TV show host who is so bad at real estate that he couldn’t profitably run a casino (a casino!), and has declared bankruptcy four times. Trump, as usual, spent his time bragging and promoting himself as the bestest, toughest, smartest, conservativest person in the room. He said that he is 80% sure that he is running for president. You could still make a bundle betting against it. He will pull out as soon as he is asked to release his financial statements.

Trump ventured back into the birtherism that he has long espoused. He claimed that Obama “wrote a book when he was a young man and it said born in Kenya.” That’s a flat-out lie. Trump also bragged that he was responsible for Obama releasing his birth certificate. That’s a flat-out lie. Then he bleated “Now we have to find out whether or not it was real.” So Trump is still a full-bore birther. Funny, he has never told us what happened to his team of investigators that he claimed he sent to Hawaii. Does he ever get tired of making a fool of himself? What’s worse is that there was a room full of people who applauded his raving madness.

If you thought that 2012 was fun, with its circus of right-wing loonies, you aint seen nothing yet. 2016 is already shaping up to be even wingnuttier. I really can’t wait for the campaign season to get started.

The Republican News Network (aka Fox News) is taking a hard turn away from domestic issues in advance of the 2016 election cycle. For the past several years Fox and the rest of the Right-Wing Media Circus has focused heavily on matters that hit close to home like the economy, unemployment, immigration, marriage equality, education, and relentlessly, healthcare – or more accurately, opposition to it.

Unfortunately for the GOP, every one of those issues has been trending favorably for the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. The economy has grown by historic rates. The stock market has hit record highs. The deficit has declined by two-thirds. Unemployment dropped from 10.1 to 5.7 percent and wages are beginning to rise. The majority of the public support the President’s positions on immigration. Marriage equality is being affirmed by courts across the country. Both academic and financial education reforms proposed by Obama are hugely popular. And ObamaCare reached new plateaus of success signing up more than 11 million new people this year.

Also influencing the right is a Gallup poll released this week showing that terrorism has jumped in importance to the electorate. Fox News immediately began promoting this poll as evidence that Americans are convulsed with worry about being blown up in a cafe on Main Street. What they don’t mention is that terrorism in the poll shot up to a mere 8% and is still in fifth place behind four domestic issues. Also not mentioned is that another Gallup poll released the same day shows the President’s standing is on the rise. The poll shows him making significant gains with independents and even Republicans. And those gains are seen both personally and for his stance on issues.

So what is an obsessively hostile cable TV “news” network with a mission to promote conservative policies and Republican candidates to do? Of course, they have to pivot to foreign policy in a desperate bid to find a narrative that will advance their political goals. That is what’s happening now as this exchange from Fox News yesterday demonstrates:

Charles Krauthammer: This is going to be be one of those rare presidential runs in which foreign affairs is one of the dominant issues […] That is a very ripe field for the Republicans.Ron Fournier: Charles is right. This is going to be a foreign policy election. I think that’s going to be really tough for Hillary given her last job.

Huh? Fournier didn’t elaborate on why Hillary Clinton’s last job as Secretary of State would make things harder for her if foreign policy were to take precedence. Running the State Department for four years would ordinarily be seen as a prime resume enhancement in an environment that prized international experience. Presumably the right is hankering for an opportunity to beat the Benghazi drum some more, but since they have failed to produce any evidence of wrongdoing after three years and dozens of investigations (including findings that exonerate Clinton and Obama by the GOP led House Intelligence Committee), it seems rather far-fetched that they can make an issue of it now. And when the election heats up Clinton will have a strong record of achievement about which to brag.

More to the point, the effort by Fox to divert attention away from the positive domestic news is bound to fail for three reasons. First, whatever plausible case they have to make against Obama and/or Clinton on foreign policy, they aren’t making it. Instead, they are wasting breath on such ludicrous trivialities as whether or not the word “Islamic” is appended to every mention of terrorism. Their mantra on this is that you have to “call it what it is” in order to win. They seem to believe that just changing the rhetoric all by itself would cause the bad guys to throw in the towel. That, of course, is absurd. The truth is that tarring all Muslims with an association to terrorism would only alienate the Islamic allies we need to prevail. The only parties who insist on this language are GOP/Fox News conservatives and the terrorists themselves. So why is Fox taking their side? That’s a question that Fox News will answer by shouting as loudly as possible, “Benghazi!”

The second reason that latching unto a foreign affairs campaign theme would fail is that, in addition to not making a negative case against Clinton, Republicans are also not making an affirmative case for themselves. Their fierce condemnations of Obama as being weak and incompetent (besides being somewhat unpatriotic by their own definition) imply that their alternative would be to recklessly leap back into a war footing around the world with fronts ranging from Iraq to Iran to Syria to Afghanistan to Ukraine, and even to Russia and North Korea. That would be a hard sell to the American people. What’s more, Republicans are already leaning on the same people that so profoundly wrecked the nation’s international relations as the would-be architects of the next GOP administration’s foreign policy.

Finally, after failing to make a foreign policy case against Clinton or for themselves, Fox and the GOP are forgetting the universal truth about presidential campaigns. As immortalized by James Carville, “It’s the economy, stupid.” No matter how much the right wants to avoid the domestic progress the nation has made in the years since George W. Bush and his cronies cratered the economy, that will always be the primary driver in voting for a national leader. And on that subject Republicans have nothing but failure to point to, while Democrats under Obama have an increasingly prosperous country and an agenda advocating on behalf of the middle-class. In addition, Clinton happens to be married to the last president to balance the budget while producing strong economic growth and job creation.

It’s no wonder that Republicans don’t want to run on domestic issues. And as their PR division, Fox News is valiantly striving to help them to change the subject. But no matter how hard they pray their wishes will not be realized. 2016 will be decided by an economic debate, just like every other presidential election. That fact, however, won’t deter the right from trying to elevate foreign policy because it’s all they have. And in a presidential election year, when turnout is higher, demographics favor Democrats, and the GOP has more at-risk seats than their foes, the outlook for Republicans is filled with the gloom that they have been trying to project on Democrats ever since the black guy moved into the White House.